


After The First Time

by afinecollector (orphan_account)



Series: Not Waving but Drowning [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Epilepsy, Fit, Focal Seizure, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, JME, Janz Syndrome, Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy, Myoclonic Epilepsy, Partial Seizure, Seizure, T/C Seizure, accidental ableism, convulsions, epileptic, fitting, grand mal, h/c, petit mal, seizure disorder, tonic clonic, tonic clonic seizure, tonic-clonic seizure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 23:59:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7485012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/afinecollector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Mycroft gone, Sherlock is navigating school on his own. Tired and grumpy after being thrown out of class, he finds himself alone when a seizure hits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After The First Time

“Sherlock Holmes, if I have to ask you to shut your mouth once more during this lesson, I’ll come over there and tape it closed.” Mister Vincent warned from the front of the class, looking sternly over his rounded glasses as he sat behind his desk, peering out at the entire classroom. A few heads turned in Sherlock’s direction and Sherlock immediately rolled his eyes. 

“I wasn’t talking. I haven’t been talking the entire time, in fact.” Sherlock’s voice heard over the quiet made almost every child look up and Mister Vincent’s eyes grew wide behind his spectacles. “Perhaps you need to clean your glasses, or better yet get a hearing aid so that you recognise the different tones of people’s voices.” 

“Get out.” Mister Vincent rose to his feet and stalked across the classroom to where Sherlock was seated. “On your feet, leave my classroom.” He ordered, standing beside Sherlock and peering down at him with a withering look, and pointed to the door. Sherlock obliged. He got to his feet, picked up his bag, and walked from the classroom with Mister Vincent hot behind him. As the door closed behind the two of them, Mister Vincent ordered Sherlock to stand outside of the classroom with his back to the wall and wait for the bell to ring in the end of class. “If I hear a word from your mouth, young man, you’ll be sorry you even woke up this morning.” He warned, giving Sherlock a final glare before he returned to his classroom. 

Sherlock sighed as the door closed again and rested awkwardly against the wall, all gangly limbs and petulantly placed facial features. He knew he was a smart-mouth, and he knew that perhaps it was something he needed to address, but he also knew that he didn’t care for being blamed for things he hadn’t done. Up until being told off, he had actually been quietly completing the set work for the lesson without so much as a whisper. He gnawed at the inside of his mouth and then blew his cheeks out, passing air inside from side to side before blowing it out noisily. 

He fiddled with the bracelet around his wrist, twisting the silver links back and forth, and read the engraved text he hated so much. _Sherlock Holmes - EPILEPSY_. He ran his finger over the engraving, letting his short nails scratch into it a little, before releasing it and pulling the sleeve back down on his jumper. If Mycroft had still been at the school, he’d have ditched the class entirely and gone in search of him. Alas, Mycroft was now away at University and Sherlock, for the first time in his life, was experiencing true isolation. 

He sighed heavily and slumped down the wall to sit on the floor, his legs bent up and his arms resting on his kneecaps. He knew old Vincent would disapprove but he didn’t care, he was bored and angry, and fed up of doing what people told him to do. He tapped out a random tune with his fingers in mid-air, but it quickly grew boring. He twisted his curls around his left index finger but stopped short of falling asleep - and out of embarrassment, fearing somebody might catch him twirling his hair. He closed his eyes and let his head rest back against the wall, then relaxed his legs down, letting them stretch out in front of him, and rested his hands in his lap. 

He yawned, not certain if it was fatigue or boredom, and let out an unnecessary groan along with it before snapping his mouth closed again. There was at least another half an hour left of Vincent’s lesson, and Sherlock wasn’t sure he could stay awake sitting out here doing nothing. Checking that Vincent wasn’t peering through the glass pane in the door, Sherlock got to his feet and hooked his bag over his shoulder, and disappeared out of the humanities block without so much as a bye or leave. 

He wandered across the abandoned parapet and into the lunch hall. He checked the coast was clear, fearing some teacher or another might be milling around, and then sank down into one of the numerous vacant chairs at the furthest table in the large hall. He put his bag on the table in front of him and dug around inside of it for his book. Pulling the well-worn copy of Dracula out, he thumbed it open at the last page he’d read to and settled against the table to continue the story. 

Had anyone been passing, they’d have seen the six times in ten minutes that Sherlock’s concentration dipped and he slipped into an absence seizure, eyes blinking frequently and tongue swiping back and forth across his lips. Mycroft would have seen it and been worried - frequent absence seizures in such a short space of time often pointed to Sherlock’s focal seizure spreading and becoming generalised, meaning he would experience a tonic-clonic seizure. Mycroft would have given him diazepam, or taken him away from the table and got him to lie down somewhere safe. But Mycroft wasn’t here - nobody was. 

And so, when the tonic phase of the seizure hit Sherlock suddenly, his body stiffened sharply in the chair and he slipped down, knocking his chin off the table and scraping his back across the seat of the chair as he clattered to the floor in a rigid jumble of limbs with a deep, throaty cry. It took a few minutes for the clonic phase to take hold but, when it did, it was unrelenting in its grasp. Sherlock’s legs remained almost perfectly still and rigid while his arms contracted across his torso and his neck craned back at an awkward ankle, stretching his jaw down whilst turning his head to the side. His fingers flexed and bent like awkward talons and his breathing sounded foamy as his throat constricted and forced saliva to build up and run slickly across his tilted cheek. His breaths huffed in grunts from his chest and his eyes were locked in a sideways glance, wide open but blind to his surroundings. 

Sherlock’s fit last four minutes and some-odd seconds, longer than his previous tonic-clonic seizure, and when it slowly came to an end he lay weak and semi-conscious, and completely alone on the tiled lunch hall floor, struggling to recover his breathing’s natural rhythm and to fight back into consciousness. 

Thank goodness for Rita, one of the school’s many kitchen attendants, whose job it was to lay the cutlery tray at the front of the dining hall. As she stepped inside with her cart, loaded with cutlery and beakers for the juice tray, she immediately noticed the misplacement of Sherlock’s chair and, subsequently, Sherlock himself. Abandoning the cart, she hurried across the hall and crouched on her knees beside Sherlock. She turned him quickly onto his side, noticing the trembling feeling in his arms beneath her fingers, brushed his hair from his eyes with her rough, left hand. 

“Oh, sweet Heavens.” She exclaimed, catching sight of the bleeding split in Sherlock’s chin, and began calling out for help. “Lawrence! Lawrence, come in here - I need your help! Lawrence!” She yelled out to the head cook, who had been chatting with her before she’d stepped into the room, hoping he was still within earshot. “Lawrence!” She shouted louder, not able to take her eyes off Sherlock’s pale face. 

Feeling like she’d been shouting forever, Rita was sure her relief was plain on her face when Lawrence stepped into the hall. “God, Rita, what...oh, Jesus, is that the Holmes kid?” 

Rita nodded. “Yes.” She looked up at Lawrence standing behind her. “When the head went through the safety and seizure training with us, I hardly expected we’d need it.” She shook her head and looked back at Sherlock. “He’s hurt himself, his face is bleeding. Do we need to call his family, or emergency services?” 

Lawrence shrugged - he had no idea. “Both?” He questioned. 

“Both is good,” Rita nodded her head. “You call, I’ll stay with him. Poor lad is soaking wet, too.” She shook her head and cast pitying eyes over Sherlock. “Oh, shh, it’s okay my dear just stay nice and still. Don’t try to get up, Sherlock, stay still, you had a seizure. You’ll be alright now.” She instructed as Sherlock began to move against her hand resting on his shoulder. “Settle down, my dear, settle down. You’ll be okay, an ambulance is on it’s way.” 

 

When Sherlock woke properly, what was actually three hours later, he was curled on a hospital bed wearing a gown and a cotton blanket, and was hooked up to the EEG and pulse ox. He groaned, his muscles aching all over his body, and turned from his left side onto his back. His head hurt, his back felt hot and stingy, and he had a wicked ache on the tip of his tongue. 

“Hello, lovely.” A bright-eyed and entirely too loud nurse gave Sherlock a reassuring smile. “You’re at Queens Hospital, my lovely, and your parents are just outside with the doctor. Seems you gave everyone a bit of a scare at school today. You had a seizure, my lovely, alright, so you’ll be feeling a bit funny, I know. How’s your mouth? We think you bit your tongue - think you might have had a clatter on the way down.” 

Sherlock didn’t like the sound of her voice; she talked to him like he was five, not thirteen, and it made him want to throw swear words at her to make her be quiet. “Dracula…” Sherlock said, and frowned deeply as he tried to work out why he’d said it at all. 

“Dracula?” The nurse smiled and gave a light laugh. “Oh, from biting your tongue?” She asked, “Not quite - I’ve seen much worse, my lovely, it was just a small nip. Do you want a drink or anything?” Sherlock shook his head, and batted her hand away when she offered him a beaker of water. “Alright then, my lovely. I’ll pop out and get your Mum and Dad in, okay?” She touched Sherlock’s thigh - presumably meaning to be affectionate - and left the room. 

Sherlock stared up at the ceiling above him; ah, he remembered those stickers. They made him feel sick, and they made him miss Mycroft. He turned back over onto his side and curled up tightly, closing his eyes as they began to water with hot tears. _Don’t cry, don’t bloody cry_.


End file.
